Online reputation management: estimating the impact of management responses on consumer reviews

We investigate the relationship between a firm’s use of management responses and its online reputation. We focus on the hotel industry and present several findings. First, hotels are likely to start responding following a negative shock to their ratings. Second, hotels respond to positive, negative, and neutral reviews at roughly the same rate. Third, by exploiting variation in the rate with which hotels respond on different review platforms and variation in the likelihood with which consumers are exposed to management responses, we find a 0.12-star increase in ratings and a 12% increase in review volume for responding hotels. Interestingly, when hotels start responding, they receive fewer but longer negative reviews. To explain this finding, we argue that unsatisfied consumers become less likely to leave short indefensible reviews when hotels are likely to scrutinize them. Our results highlight an interesting trade-off for managers considering responding: fewer negative ratings at the cost of longer and more detailed negative feedback.Accepted manuscrip

The impact of online markets on the hotel industry: addressing competition and managing brand reputation

In this thesis, we use methods from econometrics to empirically measure and quantify how digital information influences industries and markets. Specifically, we focus on two important areas of marketing: online reputation management, and competition between online and offline markets. In the first part of the thesis, we study the impact of management review responses, a popular reputation management mechanism, on consumer ratings. To do so, we exploit a difference in managerial practice across two hotel review plat- forms, TripAdvisor and Expedia: while hotels regularly respond to their TripAdvisor reviews, they never do so on Expedia. Based on this observation we employ a “difference-in-differences” design to identify the causal impact of management responses on ratings, and show that responding hotels see an average increase of 0.1 stars. We then turn to analyze the mechanisms behind this increase in ratings and show that by responding to reviews, hotels attract consumers who are inherently more positive, and therefore more likely to leave good reviews. In the second part of the thesis, we study peer-to-peer markets and their impact on traditional industries. We do so by looking at Airbnb, a sharing economy pioneer offering short-term accommodation. We combine data from Airbnb and the Texas hotel industry, and estimate the impact of Airbnb’s entry into the Texas market on hotel room revenue. To identify Airbnb’s causal impact on hotel room revenue, we use a “difference-in-differences” empirical strategy that exploits the significant spatiotemporal variation in the patterns of Airbnb adoption across city-level markets. We estimate that in Austin, where Airbnb supply is highest, the impact on hotel revenue is roughly 8-10% for the most affected hotels. Further, we find that affected hotels have responded by reducing prices, an impact that benefits all consumers, not just participants in the sharing economy. The results presented in this thesis have practical implications for firms seeking to improve their operations and marketing strategies, platforms seeking to design better and efficient marketplaces, and consumers who are often not aware of important dynamics that can be helpful in their decision-making process

The rise of the sharing economy: estimating the impact of Airbnb on the hotel industry

Peer-to-peer markets, collectively known as the sharing economy, have emerged as alternative suppliers of goods and services traditionally provided by long-established industries. We explore the economic impact of the sharing economy on incumbent firms by studying the case of Airbnb, a prominent platform for short-term accommodations. We analyze Airbnb's entry into the state of Texas, and quantify its impact on the Texas hotel industry over the subsequent decade. We estimate that in Austin, where Airbnb supply is highest, the causal impact on hotel revenue is in the 8-10% range; moreover, the impact is non-uniform, with lower-priced hotels and those hotels not catering to business travelers being the most affected. The impact manifests itself primarily through less aggressive hotel room pricing, an impact that benefits all consumers, not just participants in the sharing economy. The price response is especially pronounced during periods of peak demand, such as SXSW, and is due to a differentiating feature of peer-to-peer platforms -- enabling instantaneous supply to scale to meet demand.Accepted manuscrip

You get what you give: theory and evidence of reciprocity in the sharing economy

We develop an analytical framework of peer interaction in the sharing economy that incorporates reciprocity, the tendency to increase (decrease) effort in response to others’ increased (decreased) effort. In our model, buyers (sellers) can induce sellers (buyers) to exert more effort by behaving well themselves. We demonstrate that this joint increased effort can improve the utility of both parties and influence the market equilibrium. We also show that bilateral reputation systems, which allow both buyers and sellers to review each other, are more responsive to reciprocity than unilateral reputation systems. By rewarding reciprocal behavior, bilateral reputation systems generate trust among strangers and informally regulate their behavior. We test the predictions of our model using data from Airbnb, a popular peer-to-peer accommodation platform. We show that Airbnb hosts that are more reciprocal receive higher ratings, and that higher rated hosts can increase their prices. Therefore, reciprocity affects equilibrium prices on Airbnb through its impact on ratings, as predicted by our analytical framework.Accepted manuscrip

Prediction of new sp3 silicon and germanium allotropes from the topology-based multiscale method

This article continues our recent publication [I.A. Baburin and D.M. Proserpio and V.A. Saleev and A.V. Shipilova, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.17, 1332 (2015)] where we have presented a comprehensive computational study of sp3 carbon allotropes based on the topologies proposed for zeolites. Here we predict six new silicon and six new germanium allotropes which have the same space group symmetries and topologies as those predicted earlier for the carbon allotropes, and study their structural, elastic, vibrational, electronic and optical properties.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, 5 tables, supplementary fil

Isotopy classes for 3-periodic net embeddings

Entangled embedded periodic nets and crystal frameworks are defined, along with their {dimension type}, {homogeneity type}, {adjacency depth} and {periodic isotopy type}. We obtain periodic isotopy classifications for various families of embedded nets with small quotient graphs. We enumerate the 25 periodic isotopy classes of depth 1 embedded nets with a single vertex quotient graph. Additionally, we classify embeddings of n-fold copies of {pcu} with all connected components in a parallel orientation and n vertices in a repeat unit, and determine their maximal symmetry periodic isotopes. We also introduce the methodology of linear graph knots on the flat 3-torus [0, 1)^3. These graph knots, with linear edges, are spatial embeddings of the labelled quotient graphs of an embedded net which are associated with its periodicity bases

Advertising strategy in the presence of reviews: An empirical analysis

We study the relationship between online reviews and advertising spending in the hotel industry. Combining a dataset of TripAdvisor reviews with other datasets describing these hotels’ advertising expenditures, we show, first, that online ratings have a causal demand-side effect on ad spending. Second, this effect is negative: hotels with higher ratings spend less on advertising than hotels with lower ratings. This suggests that hotels treat TripAdvisor ratings and advertising spending as substitutes, not complements. Third, the relationship is stronger for independent hotels than for chains, and stronger in less differentiated markets than in more differentiated markets. The former suggests that a strong brand name continues to provide some immunity to reviews and the latter that the advertising response is stronger when ratings are more likely to be pivotal. Finally, we show that the relationship between online ratings and advertising has strengthened over time, just as TripAdvisor has become more popular, implying that firms respond to online reviews if and only if consumers respond to them